We're gonna need a different way to pay for roads
Plus: Who put this solar farm in my coal plant?
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action.
I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this newsletter grows by word-of-mouth. Someone share or forward this edition with you? Sign up here. You can also read and share this edition online.
I’ve got a special edition cooking (about gas) for paid members next week (Want to read it? Join the 5% of readers who support this newsletter here), so this week I’m taking a quick look at a few stories that caught my eye.
(The Pacific Coast Highway (a state road!) in Malibu by Eric Demarq on Flickr)
You’ll never guess.. it’s infrastructure!?
This story in the LA Times identifies a consequence of the EV transition that I hadn’t previously thought about: state and local road repair is (currently) funded through gas taxes. As usual, the canary in the not-coal mine here is California, where nearly 4% of all cars in the state and 25% of new car registrations last year were EVs.
Analysts estimate will the state have $4 billion less (out of $14 billion) from the gas tax each year by 2035. Despite lower gas prices, EVs remain far less expensive to “fuel” in every state, even in places with expensive electricity, so not paying the gas tax is a good deal for EV drivers. But those cars are still riding the same roads as gas ones.
California’s not going back to gas cars, nor could it, if it wants to cut transportation emissions, the state’s largest share of greenhouse gases. So pretty soon (although apparently not this year), California is going to have to wrestle with how it wants to cover that gap. The LA Times looks at the potential (and likely controversial) options.
Related, also from the LA Times, about trade offs and the status quo harm we don’t “see”: Yes, wind turbines kill birds. But fracking is much worse.
Ban of bans, renewable edition?
Two years ago I spent a lot of time researching “ban of bans” on gas: state-wide laws that sought to invalidate local laws about banning gas hookups in new buildings. But these bills, largely driven by gas utilities, rarely overlapped in places where the local gas bans were actually being enacted. Instead they generally found their way into friendly state legislatures where no locality had yet taken this move.
After a spate of local, sometimes nasty, fights about where to site solar and wind installations, some states are now deciding to pre-empt (or more accurately, supersede) new local zoning rules about where solar and wind can’t go, as this overview story from the Associated Press describes:
“We can’t allow projects of statewide importance that are critical to our state energy security to be vetoed on purely local concerns,” said Dan Scripps, chair of Michigan’s Public Service Commission.
Scripps and two other commission members now have the power to site large-scale renewable energy projects in the state under legislation passed by Michigan lawmakers and signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November.
Michigan isn’t alone here, with a handful of states having the same set up with their utility commission and more allowing certain zoning rules to be bypassed.
Are these moves any different from the ban-of-bans? I’d argue it’s not a clean one-for-one — the outcomes are different — the potential of continuing gas infrastructure in specific places versus building large-scale solar or wind production that generates energy that will be widely used. Opposition to solar and wind in local spaces is sometimes driven by outside interests, including straight-up astroturfing, often full of spurious fears about renewables and overrides the desire of the individual landowner who wants to lease or sell.
But when it comes to a question about which level of government sets which laws, the situation looks awfully familiar. How states and localities decide between themselves is a much broader government question, but one with huge implications for fighting climate change.
Coal-to-solar, two ways
Here’s a fairly non-controversial place to put a solar farm:
One of the largest coal plants in the country will soon be replaced by the nation’s biggest solar farm. It’s part of a growing trend that climate and environmental justice advocates say is necessary to mitigate the accelerating climate crisis while safeguarding the rural coal communities that have the most to lose from the clean energy transition.
This is Sherburne County Generating Station in Minnesota, but this story is about to become even more common. Planned coal plant retirements are speeding up over the next decade and in Sherburne, and at another one of Xcel Energy’s coal plants in Minnesota, the plan is to swap them for very large solar installations with batteries (Of course, there are also coal to gas conversions in the works for some of these retiring plants as well).
Part of the rationale is to replace the economic benefit the coal plant had for the town (75% of its tax base!) but as this story from Inside Climate News describes, it’s not going to be the same.
It’s worth noting, however, that the economic trade off isn’t equal, Richardson added. Coal plants and other fossil fuel facilities, by the nature of how they operate, employ far more people than solar and wind farms, he said, meaning many career coal workers will still have to find other work and likely need retraining. … That’s why Richardson thinks it’s important to continue having a discussion about how to best support coal communities and how society should split up that responsibility fairly between involved parties, including community members, ratepayers and utilities.
Meanwhile in Hawaii, this story about what replaced the state’s last coal plant is a good explanation of one way to get a more reliable grid with renewable energy
Even more local climate action links
- Bay scallops brought prosperity and community to the people of Shelter Island. Today, most of the scallops are gone, but some fishermen haven’t given up hope (NY Times)
- It’s going to be a “remarkable” year for Chesapeake Bay Oysters, in part because of restoration efforts ( Washington Post)
- Got snowpocalypse? This tiny Colorado town is turning to community-sized solar grids (Colorado Sun)
- Why can’t the EPA protect Cancer Alley? (Citylab - gift link)
- What next for Michigan’s energy policy? (Bridge Michigan)
- Renewable energy jobs are coming to West Virginia, but who’s going to work them? (Mountain State Spotlight)
- My takeaway from this in-home test of health risks from gas stoves versus induction stoves: Turn. Your. Vent. On. (Washington Post)